AUSTRALIANS AT WAR

THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY is a compelling factual history of neoconservatism and its influence on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Click on image above for details.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

An article in the ‘Jerusalem Post’ last Sunday by Maurice Ostroff has made a claim that demonstrates the ridiculous extent to which the Zionist’s are prepared to go in order to justify the creation of a Greater Israel at the expense of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. He writes:

The Palestinians never had sovereignty over the West Bank nor East Jerusalem and Justice Schwebel concluded that since Jordan, the prior holder of these territories had seized that territory unlawfully in 1948, Israel which subsequently took that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense in 1967, has better title to it. Jordan's illegal annexation of the West bank and east Jerusalem in 1948 was recognized only by Britain and Pakistan and Jordan now makes no claim to it.

In terms of international law, between 1948 and 1967 this territory was terra nullius, or "land belonging to no one" over which sovereignty may be acquired through occupation. The concept of terra nullius is well recognized in international law. For example it has been a major issue in Australian politics and Norway occupied parts of uninhabited Eastern Greenland in the 1920s on the grounds of terra nullius.

Ostroff actually wants the world to believe that when Jordan occupied this land it was illegal but when Israel does the same thing, the land was ‘terra nullius’ and sovereignty over it can therefore be acquired by virtue of occupation. If that’s the case, since the land was occupied by Palestinians, then it is they that would surely have sovereignty over it.

It is a mistake for Ostroff to have used the case of Australia and Norway’s claim to sovereignty over parts of uninhabited Greenland as examples of ‘terra nullius’ claims because in both cases these claims were found to be illegal.

But what is really disturbing is the fact that the neocons over at Commentary magazine have also picked up on Ostroff’s piece and used it themselves to justify the occupation of East Jerusalem and the construction of Israeli residences in Gilo. It is surprising that the usually astute neocon Zionists at Commentary magazine would see fit to use such a ridiculous argument as Ostroff’s patently transparent twaddle to reinforce their own argument about Israeli occupation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

But the real nitty-gritty about all this isn’t so much about the stupidity and transparency of their arguments but, more importantly, the underlying unequivocal inference of permanency to the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem as though the Zionists now have absolute sovereignty and the clear intention of never giving up that sovereignty to the Palestinians.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Yesterday I wrote of media reports saying that the Obama administration had written to Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, ‘saying he expects the Pakistani leader to rally political and national security institutions in a united campaign against extremists’. It now seems that Blackwater, the US mercenary company, may well have been responsible for a series of bombings aimed specifically at civilians in an effort to alienate the Pakistani people from the Taliban.

In a recent video, Taliban spokesman, Azam Tariq, denied that the Taliban were responsible for a suicide bombing at the International Islamic University in Islamabad on 20 October 2009, and the massive car-bombing that indiscriminately killed scores of civilians at a market in Peshawar, a bombing that coincided with a visit by Hillary Clinton to Pakistan, on 28 October 2009. What gives Tariq’s statement credibility is the fact that, first, the Taliban, as can be seen in the video, are quite happy to claim responsibility for those bombings that were against police and security facilities which they see as legitimate targets. Second, it would not at all be in the Taliban’s interest to indiscriminately murder the very people, particularly in Peshawar where most of the people are Pashtun, that offer the Taliban most support and from whom the Taliban draw new recruits.

Tariq claims that Blackwater mercenaries working in conjunction with Pakistani security, the ISI, are responsible for the bombings. According to a report in the Pakistani online newspaper ‘The Nation’, some 202 Blackwater mercenaries arrived in Pakistan on Tuesday, 3 November 2009 on a flight out of Heathrow, London, though the report did not mention the purpose of their being in Pakistan saying only that authorities at Islamabad airport had allowed the men into Pakistan without any of the normal checks for visas, etc. The same report also noted that ex-Army Chief of Staff, Mirza Aslam Beg, had claimed “that former President Pervez Musharraf had given Blackwater the green signal to carry out its terrorist operations in the cities of Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar and Quetta”.

Many Blackwater employees are currently accommodated at the Pearl Continental luxury hotel in Peshawar, a building which has been earmarked for purchase by the US government for use as a future US consulate. They are in Peshawar “to provide security for a US-backed aid project in the area”, though what kind of ’aid’ they are providing ‘security’ for has not been specified.

Looking at the broader picture, one might ask; what would be the purpose of pushing Pakistan toward civil war? The answer is simple: Once having pushed Pakistan to the brink of such a crisis, the situation would be so critical that it would provide an ideal opportunity for the US to step in to support a pro-US government in Pakistan and also to secure Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. It would also provide the opportunity for the US to overtly fight the Taliban on Pakistani soil.

Obviously, the US military are unable to undertake any of these tasks – yet; but Blackwater mercenaries, already in Pakistan providing security to a ‘US-backed aid project’, are in a position to ruthlessly and covertly exploit an already potentially lethal political situation between the Pakistan government and the Taliban.

A very senior Australian defence public servant who I spoke to about the situation between the Taliban and Pakistan told me that ‘in a year or so Pakistan will be Australia’s, and the West’s, biggest headache but that there were plans to deal with it’.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

The US is effectively urging the Pakistan government to promote a civil war against its own people throughout Pakistan. Media reports say that the Obama administration has written to Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, ‘saying he expects the Pakistani leader to rally political and national security institutions in a united campaign against extremists’.

One should be quite clear about what Obama is doing here; he is urging the Pakistan president to conduct a civil war against its own people.

Civil wars, as America itself knows only too well, have had a habit of escalating into some of the bloodiest conflicts known to history, and yet here we are with the President of the United States demanding that Pakistan conduct a full-on civil war against a people who are not the enemy of the Pakistani people, but the enemy of the US.

All such a war will achieve is the death of hundreds of thousands of people and the tearing apart of an entire nation which will then take decades to repair. Millions are likely to be displaced as their homes are destroyed by war and millions more will likely become even greater haters of Western ‘values’ with many becoming ready and willing to join the ever-increasing Islamic army that is coming together to fight against those that come to their country to bring about death and destruction in the name of a kind of ‘freedom and democracy’ they simply don’t want.

As Obama contemplates escalating his war against the Afghan people by sending in more troops to kill and destroy in an effort to support the corrupt and unelected puppet government of Hamid Karzai, he is demanding that Ali Zardari help him clean up a mess that the US created in the first place by setting Pakistani troops against Pakistani fighters inside Pakistan that are helping their Afghan brothers over the border fight the US.

Time and time again, Bush and Obama and their allies have been told – even by their own military men – that they are fighting a war in Afghanistan that they can not possibly win. They haven’t listened. More than eight years later and with thousands dead and a Taliban today that is even stronger and more determined than it was when the US invaded in October 2001, and now with nearly thirty years experience of guerrilla fighting behind them, the US and their allies still haven’t learnt their lesson.

The US and their allies must leave Central Asia and the Middle East now – before it really is too late.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Julian Borger, diplomatic editor for the UK Guardian, reports today that his newspaper has been fined by an Iraqi court for reporting criticism of the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki. There’s a certain irony attached to this inasmuch that the offending article was actually about al-Maliki’s increasing authoritarianism.

We were told over and over again prior to and then during the war that killed hundreds of thousands, maybe over a million, displaced millions more, and completely gutted an entire nation that is still suffering daily that all of this suffering was in aid of bringing true democracy and freedom to Iraq. Now, the very foundation upon which democracy is built, freedom of the press, has been removed rendering all that suffering as worthless.

But didn’t we on the left mention that this was likely to happen? Did we not say that all this waffle about bringing ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ to Iraq was merely rhetorical nonsense designed to bring public opinion on side to support the war? Did we not say that the governments that made up the Coalition of the Willing and their neocon backers weren’t really in the slightest bit interested in ‘Freedom’ or ‘Democracy’? Did we not say that the geo-political reality of the war’s intention was to give the West hegemony over the region in order to both secure its resources for the West and eliminate an enemy of Israel?

Now, the remaining façade of ‘democracy’ has been torn away. Corrupt politicians run Iraq under the protection of the US and the West. In return, the West gets the lion’s share of Iraq’s resources.

It was never about ‘freedom’ or ‘democracy’; it was always only ever about power, hegemony, oil and Israel.

The vast majority of the world knew all along that this was what it was really all about but our leaders never listened to our voices as unprecedented numbers of us all over the planet marched down our nation’s streets in protest.

There is no real ‘democracy’ in the West. You may vote for this corrupted super-rich bunch of megalomaniacs or you can vote for that bunch of corrupted super-rich megalomaniacs.

Monday, November 09, 2009

It seems I am not alone in my opinion that Israel may attack Hezbollah at the same time as it launches an attack against Iran. I have for years commented at this blog, and elsewhere, about what I can only describe as the Final Confrontation between Iran and her allies; Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Israel. As can be seen, I have often been proved wrong when I have stated that such a Final Confrontation has been imminent. I do not, however, believe that I am wrong about it being a matter of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’.

I have opined that for the Zionists of Israel such a Final Confrontation is not only inevitable but essential if Israel is to realise its dream of a Greater Israel that includes the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and south Lebanon up to the Litani River where it will gain access to its much needed waters. For Israel, this confrontation with Iran is necessary because Iran is all that stands between Israel and its Greater Israel dream. Without Iran to support them, Hamas and Hezbollah resistance to Israel will collapse.

I have argued that the likely scenario for this Final Confrontation will be based on Iran’s so-called ‘nuclear weapons program’ being used as the casus belli. I have stated explicitly, however, that Israel’s real purpose is to use such a Final Confrontation in order to defeat Hamas and Hezbollah so that Israel can then realise its Greater Israel dream and that any attack against Iran will be accompanied by an all-out offensive against Hezbollah and Hamas.

I stress that the main aim of this Final Confrontation is not to destroy Iran’s ‘nuclear weapons program’ – that is merely a propaganda ploy to create the casus belli it needs to attack Iran – but to defeat then destroy Hamas and Hezbollah. When the Final Confrontation does come, Israel will be relying on the US to subdue Iran after Israel has instigated an attack, thus leaving Israel free to devote all of its land forces and most of its air force to attack and invade south Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

In the past when Israel has attempted to provoke Iran into a Final Confrontation, Iran did not respond. This left Israel in an embarrassing situation whereby it stood accused of using ‘disproportionate force’ and of having committed war crimes by deliberately targeting civilians and civilian areas. The embarrassment was compounded by the fact that the Israelis, both in their war against Hezbollah in 2006 and their war against Hamas in 2008/2009, were not able to achieve their stated war aims of destroying Hezbollah or Hamas. The reality is that Israel will be unable to destroy either without using an attack on Iran to distract from the carnage that will happen as Israel attempts the destruction of Hamas and Hezbollah. While the world’s attention is drawn to the massive attacks against Iran, Israel will go about quietly destroying every vestige of Hamas and Hezbollah resistance.

The world should not be fooled by Israel’s past failures to destroy Hamas and Hezbollah. The fact is; Israel has the military wherewithal to destroy both simultaneously and with ease, but can only do so while the worlds eyes are looking elsewhere – hence the need for a massive attack against Iran.

Friday, November 06, 2009

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei said yesterday that there’s nothing to worry about at Iran’s nuclear facility at Qom. The news will not please the Zionist warmongers in Israel and their neocon fellow travellers in the US who insist that Iran has a ‘nuclear weapons program’ which, according to the Israelis, they want to use to ‘wipe Israel (and most of Palestine) of the map’.[1]

The Israeli Zionists and their neocon supporters in the US have been using the ‘Iran has a nuclear weapons program’ and the Iran wants to ‘wipe Israel off the map’ nonsense for some years now in the hope that they can drum up enough support from world-wide public opinion to justify attacking Iran in order to bring about a regime change there. But each time they beat their war drums and build it up to a crescendo where there could well have been an attack against Iran, along comes ElBaradei to rain on their parade by saying that there’s still no evidence of any Iranian ‘nuclear weapons program’. And each time that has happened, a pattern has emerged whereby Israel attempt to find some other casus belli to get at Iran via either Hezbollah in south Lebanon or Hamas in the Gaza Strip or both.

On several occasions during these past few years Israel has attacked both the Gaza Strip and south Lebanon on some Israeli-manipulated pretext or another in order to try and drag Iran into these wars thus providing an excuse to attack Iran directly with the help of the US. So far the Israelis have failed miserably.

But now it seems the Israelis might me up for another try at stirring up a war via Hamas or Hezbollah in the light of ElBaradei’s latest pronouncements about his findings at Qom.

Israel now claims that Hamas have secretly tested a new missile, supplied to them by Iran of course, with a range of around sixty miles which means Tel Aviv could be targeted. As a result, an article in ‘Ha’aretz’ today claims that Israel is preparing Israel for another assault against the people of the Gaza. On top of that, Israel has also claimed that a ship it stopped and hijacked on the high seas was delivering arms supplied by Iran destined for Hezbollah in Lebanon providing the possibility of another excuse to attack the people of Lebanon in the hope of escalating such a war to draw in Iran and the US.

Just as 114 states at the UN endorse the Goldstone report on Israeli warcrimes committed in the Gaza, the stage seems to be set for yet another act of murder and mayhem designed to get the US to attack Iran. The Israeli sense of timing is always immaculate.

ENDNOTE

[1] Israel has never explained how Iran intended to use its nuclear weapon against such a tiny nation as Israel without doing untold harm to the entire region including Irans allies; the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and the people of south Lebanon. Nor has Israel ever explained how Iran hoped to avoid a retaliatory nuclear strike by either Israel or the US.

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian chief negotiator, is hinting that the goal of a Palestinian state may now have to be ‘abandoned’ unless something positive is done about the settlements in the West Bank. Since it is now quite clear that, despite the rhetoric, the US has no intention whatsoever of enforcing their demands that Israel stop building more settlements – let alone remove those settlements that are already there – any ideas that Palestinians may have had about having a state that consisted entirely of the West Bank can be forgotten; it simply is not going to happen.

The extent of settlement building over the years has now reached a point of no return. What were enclaves of Israeli settlers living in the West Bank has now grown to such an extent that the situation has been reversed and there are now only large, overcrowded and under-serviced enclaves of Palestinians struggling to survive in the occupied West Bank.

Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud-dominated coalition government exist specifically to build a Greater Israel; a Greater Israel that includes what they call Judea and Samaria, which most people know as the West Bank.

For decades successive Israeli governments and US administrations have paid lip service to the idea of creating a Palestinian state. They have signed treaties and accords, they have drawn road maps and received Nobel Peace prizes, but all of this has come to absolutely nothing. And all the while, the Palestinian’s lot has deteriorated to a point where there is now almost a sense of utter hopelessness as they see Palestinians being thrown out of their homes in Jerusalem which Jewish settlers then move into.

In the Gaza Strip, Palestinians live in a virtual prison from which there is no hope of release and within which life daily deteriorates. There is no future for them while the current situation prevails. There can only be one endgame as far as the Zionists are concerned with regard to the Gaza; life will become so miserable for them that they will have no alternative eventually but ask the Israelis to allow them to leave and migrate to another Arab country. Eventually, so the Zionists hope, the same will happen to the Palestinians of the West Bank.

The Palestinian people – and the entire world – must now face the reality that there will never be a free and sovereign Palestinian state existing alongside Israel and that the ONLY solution now for both the Israeli and Palestinian people is to create a single state within which Jews and Arabs live as equals in a free and democratic secular state.

The two-state solution is dead; it was a myth designed to buy Zionists more time to create the Greater Israel they have always dreamed of. They grabbed as much land as they could in 1948 and then again in 1967 while they distracted the world with claims of being the victim when in fact they were the aggressor. They have over the years adopted a policy of taking three steps forward and then two steps back in an effort to convince the world that it was always they that made the concessions. They have done this in Lebanon, the Gaza and in the Golan Heights. They say that they gave the Gaza back to the Palestinians in September 2005 but in reality it was never theirs to give back in the first place and their hope is that one day they’ll have it again to settle in once they’ve squeezed the Palestinians out. In the process they murdered, bombed, executed and imprisoned without trial tens of thousands of Palestinians and impoverished millions more.

The Zionists never have had any intention of allowing any kind of Palestinian state to exist. Slowly, at last, the world is coming to grips with this reality. The next step is for the world to support the demand for a single state in which Jews and Arabs can live in peace. Only then can Jews truly have a place to call home – a home they can share as equals with others who also know the place as their home. Only then can the Middle East become a place of peace.

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About Me

is an Aeronautical Engineer, Historian and general carer of what goes on in the world.
Apart from an earlier career in engineering, Lataan also has a First Class Honours BA degree in History and a PhD in International Politics.
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